Item Response Model Investigation of the (German) Interpersonal Reactivity Index Empathy Questionnaire

Autor(en)

Ingrid Koller, Claus Lamm

Abstrakt

The interpersonal reactivity index (IRI) is a widely used personality questionnaire for measuring empathy. We investigated the psychometric properties of the German version using the partial credit model. If this model fits the data, the raw-scores are fair measures of the latent construct. Only in such a case, further analyses based on the raw-scores are accurate and valid. The results showed model fit only for the subscale empathic concern. The subscales perspective taking and fantasy consisted of two theoretically explainable sub-dimensions. For the subscale personal distress, no model fit could be achieved. Our study provides important information on the psychometric qualities of the IRI that has been repeatedly used to assess, for example, group differences. It demonstrates that these analyses were not warranted by the psychometric quality of the questionnaire. Our results provide direct suggestions (e.g., theoretically explainable sub-dimensions) for further developments of the IRI to overcome this limitation.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Psychologie der Kognition, Emotion und Methoden

Journal

European Journal of Psychological Assessment

Band

31

Seiten

211-221

Anzahl der Seiten

11

ISSN

1015-5759

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000227

Publikationsdatum

07-2015

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

501006 Experimentalpsychologie

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Applied Psychology

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/item-response-model-investigation-of-the-german-interpersonal-reactivity-index-empathy-questionnaire(49fe0de0-6f58-493a-8939-63f4fe97bc69).html